Government Support to Fisheries: Why should we care?

Fish Resources Are Precious and Should Be Protected to Benefit Future Generations

Fisheries provide food and livelihoods for many millions of people and are especially important for poor coastal communities in developing countries. However, while fish are a renewable resource, they are also mobile and often fragile; strong cooperative management systems are thus needed to avoid overfishing and ensure the benefits of fishing can be equitably and sustainably shared. Moreover, fish are vulnerable to environmental changes, notably ocean warming, which can affect their availability through space and time. Ensuring the health of fish resources is also critical to provide ecosystem services from the ocean.

Governments often take an active role in the fisheries sector, notably by managing where, how, and by whom fishing is allowed and by funding goods and services for the sector. This active role is referred to as government support to fisheries. It can take many forms, from undertaking stock assessments and controlling fishing activities at sea and in ports, to building community centres in fishing villages or subsidizing the purchase of new vessels. Support therefore includes subsidies, but it is also broader, because it goes beyond what most definitions of a "subsidy" cover. Typically, governments use many different types of support policies that, when taken together, make up the support policy mix.

Understanding what is supported and how government funding is allocated to the sector is important because these can affect fishers' behaviour by incentivizing fishing effort and investment in fishing capacity, and consequently the status of the fish resources they harvest. Support can even influence the extent to which illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing occurs.

Why Is Reforming Government Support Important?

Ensuring the sustainable development of fisheries requires that they are managed in a way that is environmentally sustainable, economically productive, and socially inclusive. Government support to fisheries can influence all these dimensions.

Different types of support affect the sector differently, and some have a higher risk of leading to unintended outcomes. Some forms of support can improve the sustainability of the sector by strengthening the capacity to monitor the health and productivity of fish stocks and accordingly manage fishing in ways that do not compromise the future abundance of fish. However, other forms can have the opposite effect if they lead to fishing effort increasing to the point where excessive quantities of fish are harvested and the resource is overexploited. Beyond the environmental impacts on fish and the ecosystems they are part of, support policies that result in overfishing and depleted resources can also have broad negative socio-economic impacts, such as disrupting the local and regional food systems and undermining the well-being of the fishers and communities that depend on the overexploited fish stocks. Further, overfished resources ultimately compromise fishers' incomes, potentially making them more dependent on support in the process.

The design of fisheries support policies can be important to fishers and consumers well beyond the national waters of the supporting countries.

Many fish stocks straddle the waters of more than one country or move between national and international waters. Consequently, poorly designed fisheries support that undermines the sustainability or productivity of fish resources can have impacts beyond the countries giving the support, potentially exacerbating existing tensions or even creating new ones. For example, fisheries support that leads to overfishing in one country can reduce the amount of fish available to fishers in another country that shares the same stock. This issue will likely grow in importance as climate change leads to more stocks moving across national boundaries. In addition, fish is one of the most traded food commodities, so the impacts of fishing policies in one country can directly affect food availability and access to food in others. Therefore, the design of fisheries support policies can be important to fishers and consumers well beyond the national waters of the supporting countries.

Recognizing these issues, many countries have prioritized fisheries support reform that moves away from policies that have negative impacts on sustainability. The same is true of international discussions, as reflected in Sustainable Development Goal target 14.6, which calls for eliminating harmful fisheries, and World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations to agree on disciplines binding members to do so. A first agreement reached at the WTO in June 2022 prohibits fisheries subsidies when sustainability is most at risk, and a second, broader set of rules is still under negotiation. (See Tristan Irschlinger's article on the state-of-play of fisheries subsidies negotiations in this issue of the Trade and Sustainability Review.)  

What Do We Know About Government Support for Fisheries?

The OECD collects data on government support to fisheries across 41 countries and territories, including most OECD members and some other large fishing nations that, together, account for about 70% of global fishing. The Fisheries Support Estimate (FSE) database offers a consistent framework that allows the OECD to track the nature and the extent of support provided across different countries and over time.

The latest update of the FSE database, published with the OECD Review of Fisheries 2025, identifies USD 10.7 billion of annual government support to fisheries from 2020 to 2022. This equates to 10.6% of the value of marine capture fisheries production in countries and territories covered by the database, or an average of USD 552 per fisher. Large fishing nations are also the largest subsidizers. Six economies accounted for 84.6% of the support recorded in the OECD FSE database: China (36.1%), Japan (12.4%), the United States (11%), Canada (10.7%), European Union member states (combined; 8%), and Brazil (6.4%).

Despite a recent upward trend, spending on fisheries support is slightly lower than it was a decade ago when average annual spending totalled USD 11.1 billion (from 2010 to 2012). How governments spend their money has also changed. For example, support to income has almost doubled over the same period, with most of the increase during and after 2020, as governments sought to mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on fishers. Spending on management, monitoring, control, and surveillance has also climbed in recent years, with more than two-thirds of the countries in the FSE database spending more in absolute terms and with respect to their fleet size in the years 2020–2022 than a decade earlier. Conversely, support for fuel consumption in fisheries has fallen, driven primarily by reforms in China. However, the lack of detailed information on support to fuel that is granted to fisheries alongside other sectors (sometimes referred to as "non-specific" support) means the true scale of fuel support and how it is changing over time remain uncertain.

Where Is Reform Needed?

The first step in reforming fisheries support to ensure the sector's sustainability and resilience is to understand how the various types of government support affect fishers and fishes. Building on the FSE, the OECD has developed a framework for assessing the risks that different types of support policy will lead to unsustainable fishing (Figure 1).

This so-called risk matrix, first published in the 2022 edition of the OECD Review of Fisheries, identifies the risks posed based on the type of support policy and the policy context. This is important because, as shown by Martini and Innes (2008), while different types of policies have higher or lower risk of encouraging unsustainable fishing, per se, the context in which they are applied ultimately defines their impacts. Three factors can determine whether the risk of unsustainable fishing is translated into actual unsustainable fishing:

1. Management effectiveness: If fisheries management systems can effectively control and constrain fishing effort and capacity at sustainable levels—and prevent IUU fishing—the risk of unsustainable fishing is reduced, even for support policies that would otherwise incentivize more fishing or more investment in fishing capacity.
2. Current fishing pressure: If resources are underfished when support is provided, any additional fishing effort or capacity incentivized by support is less likely to lead to overfishing, at least in the immediate term.
3. Policy design: If the support targets specific subgroups of fishers or areas where stocks are underfished, and/or fishing is effectively managed and controlled, the risk of unsustainable fishing is also reduced.

Hence, the risk matrix should be considered as a rule-of-thumb guide to policy-makers looking to quickly identify where there are risks of unsustainable fishing. Understanding the impacts of specific policies in detail will require additional research.

The matrix classifies the risk of overfishing into different categories based on how directly different policies create incentives to invest in fishing capacity, intensify fishing effort, or engage in IUU fishing (altogether referred to as unsustainable fishing).

High-risk policies directly reduce operating costs, making it possible for more vessels to fish more intensively and at longer distances. If management is ineffective, such support can boost (or maintain) levels of capacity above what is required to exploit the resource sustainably.

Moderate-risk policies have an indirect and potentially less-distorting impact on the economic incentives facing the sector. As a result, these types of support present a more moderate risk of encouraging unsustainable fishing in the absence of effective management, but still have the potential to increase fishing effort and capacity in ways that could harm fish stocks.

Policies classified as uncertain risk are those for which the implications are unclear as they can be designed and applied in various ways with very different impacts, and are, therefore, even more context-dependent than others. For example, education and training can reduce fishing pressure if they provide new skills for fishers and create opportunities outside the sector. They can also reduce fishing pressure if they promote the uptake of more sustainable fishing practices. However, education and training could also increase fishing pressure if the training focused, for example, on improved efficiency in the use of vessels and gears in the absence of effective regulation of the fishing pressure.

Finally, no-risk policies, which help ensure that fish resources are suitably managed and regulations are enforced, present no risk of encouraging unsustainable fishing. Where effectively implemented, they are instrumental in improving stock status by providing a better understanding of the state of fisheries resources, better aligning capacity and effort with the resources available, monitoring and controlling fishing activities, and ensuring that catches are controlled.

In the 2025 edition of the OECD Review of Fisheries, we applied the risk matrix to the most recently collected data on government support included in FSE database, and found that 65% of total support to fisheries (2020–2022 average)—that is, nearly USD 7 billion annually—presented a risk (moderate or high) of encouraging unsustainable fishing. Support that poses no risk accounted for 29% of the policy mix in recent years (or USD 3.1 billion annually) and was largely made up of spending on management, monitoring, control, and surveillance. Compared to the 2010–2012 average, high-risk support declined by 57% and moderate-risk support grew by 77%, while no-risk support rose by 14%. In short, the level of risk posed by the global fisheries support policy mix has declined over the last decade. While this is encouraging, it remains considerable, and further reform is needed.

At the individual country level, risk profiles vary considerably. They range from reassuring policy mixes combining little (to zero) high-risk support with high levels of no-risk support, to more concerning policy mixes with little (to zero) no-risk support, which essentially means very limited spending on management and monitoring, control, and surveillance, combined with substantial levels of high- or moderate-risk support.

In more than half of countries and territories covered by the FSE database, the proportion of high- or medium-risk support in the policy mix has fallen since 2010–2012, while the proportion of no-risk support has increased, reflecting the positive trend seen at an aggregate level (Figure 2). However, in 2020–2022, more than 50% of support was still of a high- or moderate-risk nature in 15 countries and territories in the FSE (which together accounted for 66% of total support in the same period). Progressing toward sustainable fisheries objectives means transitioning away from these forms of support, irrespective of the case-specific policy context (for more country-level detail, please see Chapters 6 and 7 in the latest edition of the OECD Review of Fisheries).

What Can Be Done?

The OECD's analysis results (discussed in detail in the OECD Review of Fisheries 2025) indicate the need to support policy reform in three priorities.

First, governments should favour support policy types that do not risk encouraging unsustainable fishing. Support policies can only be unambiguously beneficial to fishers and society when they help ensure fishing is sustainable and safeguard resources and ecosystems. This is the case of investment in stock assessment, fisheries management, and enforcement. Conversely, support risks encouraging unsustainable and illegal fishing when it distorts the economic environment within which fishers operate. Fuel and vessel subsidies are among the policies that present a high risk of encouraging unsustainable fishing. In addition, support that lowers the cost of fuel can transfer a relatively low proportion of the money to fishers (due to capture by intermediaries), while also being inequitable, by reducing the competitiveness of smaller-scale fishers who use relatively less fuel (and thus receive less support) than larger fishing operations, ultimately making them worse off than they would have been without the support. Put simply, more of each dollar spent by governments would benefit fishers if lower- or no-risk forms of support were used instead of fuel support.

Second, support policies should be designed carefully to target the provision of support to sustainable fisheries and fishing practices. The policy context and eligibility conditions matter: the risks of support-driven unsustainable fishing can be limited if fishers are eligible for support only if they operate in fisheries that are demonstrably sustainably managed and subject to effective enforcement and control. This is precisely one of the issues the additional WTO rules on fisheries subsidies currently under negotiation would aim to ensure.

Governments should mitigate any risk inherent in the support policy mix by allocating adequate and sufficient funding for sustainable fisheries management.

Finally, governments should mitigate any risk inherent in the support policy mix by allocating adequate and sufficient funding for sustainable fisheries management, including through regular fish stock assessments that provide evidence of how stocks are responding to the fishing pressure and external environmental pressures—notably as a consequence of climate change. This is crucial, because it is likely not possible to avoid all policies that create a risk of unsustainable fishing. For example, targeted and time-bound income support can be an essential lifeline for fishers dealing with the impacts of climate change on stocks for whom alternative livelihood options are tricky to find.

Using government support better is crucial for both the sector's long-term sustainability and the well-being of fishers. Importantly, governments can use the risk approach pioneered by the OECD to target policy reforms and any risk mitigation measures in a nuanced and flexible way, to ensure that fishers do not end up bearing the costs of the reforms. Recent reforms have shifted the balance of support in the right direction, as governments have moved away from the riskiest types of policy. But important opportunities remain to reduce the risks of unsustainable fishing from fisheries support through reforms and greater investments in fisheries management.

Claire Delpeuch, Head of Unit, Fisheries & Aquaculture at the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), Will Symes, Policy Analyst at the OECD, and James Innes, Consultant to the OECD.